


Five times Lance noticed Keith and one time he noticed something about himself

by icarusinflight



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, includes snippets from across the seasons, including post season 2, vldpositivityday2k17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 01:52:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11243871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarusinflight/pseuds/icarusinflight
Summary: Lance spent a lot of time watching Keith at the Garrison.But this is different





	Five times Lance noticed Keith and one time he noticed something about himself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [http://rookbcdhi.tumblr.com/](/gifts?recipient=http%3A%2F%2Frookbcdhi.tumblr.com%2F).



> This is part of the Voltron Positivity Project.  
> Love love!

1.

“I’d recognize that Mullet anywhere!” He yells, already taking off and launching himself down the side of the plateau, shoes skidding as he slides down the side.

It’s not exactly the truth. It’s not exactly the mullet he recognizes, although that’s a part of it. He recognizes the hair enough to know that it’s grown out since the last time he saw it. The tips had previously just brushed his neck, where now they were long enough to be curling up off his neck. He’d spent many a class seated behind the head of hair, scowling when the voice attached to it answered the questions without difficulty. He’d watched from the viewing gallery as the body attached to the hair had aced all the simulations.

He also recognized the jacket, had scowled in its direction as the owner of the jacket had worn out on their town visits.

He recognized the gloves, which had always covered his hands, despite not meeting uniform regulation.

He recognized the way the body held itself, recognized the way it was brimming with tension, always looking like it was ready for a fight.

So he recognized that mullet, but he also recognized Keith. And his heart raced at the thought of running into Keith again.

2.

Lance hadn’t been expecting Keith to come to rescue him, not after his last words over the comms.

He’d expected Blue to be handed over to one of the other Paladins, probably Hunk if he had to take a guess. Then Hunk would come rescue him, and even if Hunk was angry about Lance being conned by Nyma, but he wouldn’t hold it against him. Lance would have to apologise, and would have to _mean it_ , but Hunk wouldn’t hold it against him for long.

So he was a little surprised when he saw the Red Lion flying towards him.

The Red Lion placed Blue down on the ground, before landing down beside her, close enough that the breeze from her landing ruffled Lance’s hair.

Her jaw opened and Keith emerged, twirling the sonic cutter between his fingers, a rarely seen grin on his face.

“Hey cargo pilot” Keith called out as he approaches Lance, where he was still handcuffed to the trunk of the planet's tree-like fauna.

Lance shifted his body awkwardly, making a somewhat futile attempt at trying to appear comfortable and like there was nowhere else he would rather be.

“Hiya Keefy-boy, come to paint me like one of your French ladies?”

He continued twirling the blade, but stopped his progress towards Lance

“Sure, think you can hold that pose for a couple of hours?” He counters.

Lance huffs.

“Whatever, like you can paint.” Lance says, letting his disbelief bleed into his words.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Keith shoots back at him.

He would actually. The list of things Lance knew about Keith was shockingly short. And most of what he knew was from his garrison profile, so pretty much general garrison knowledge only.

Is Keith an artist? What sort of art does he like? He tries to cast his memory back to the desert shack, had there been art around the shack? He can’t remember, had been distracted, mind racing from the spaceship crash landing, to the impromptu rescue mission, to seeing Keith again, and the frightening possibility of a reprimand from the Garrison.

Well that had never happened.

Would likely never happen now.

Keith is still looking at him, waiting on his response before he continues his course of action.

“It’d probably be a stick figure drawing.” Lance snarks, mood somewhat soured now from his train of thought.

“It might be.” Keith says easily, still giving nothing away, but at least he starts moving towards Lance again.

Lance abandons his previous plan to pretend to be comfortable in his current position, and he pulls himself up to kneel next to the plant's trunk.

Keith walks up and crouches next to Lance to inspect the handcuffs. He places the cutter on his leg, tucking it into his hip crease, before grabbing one of Lance’s hands to inspect. Lance lets out a squawk at the touch, which he will deny ever having made in every retelling off this situation. He’s distracted by Keith’s proximity, by the way he is _literally holding his hand_. Lance is right next to him, and he gazes determinedly at the back of Keith’s hair, not taking his eyes off the infamous mullet.

He can see the individual curls, and huh, Keith has freckles on his neck. He’s never noticed them before, wouldn’t have thought that Keith had freckles. Lance and his family don’t get freckles or moles. There’s one mole on Keith’s neck which looks like it’s raised, and in this moment Lance wants nothing more than to press against it and feel if it is.

Keith moving his grip on his hand pulls him from his freckle and mole induced stupor.

Keith is holding his hand palm up in one hand, and has taken the cuff in his other hand, moving it and inspecting the cuff.

He gives a huff of noise, and Lance can’t tell if that’s positive, negative or neutral. Then Keith quickly moves his left hand to hold Lance’s wrist and the cuff in one, and picks the cutter back up.

It’s then that Lance realises what’s going to happen.

“Noooope,” he says, and “no no no.” He tries to pull his hand back from Keith, and away from the danger of Keith and the weapon he’s now wielding in his hand

Keith doesn’t relinquish his grip on his hand, but shifts it instead, bringing his fingers together around Lance’s wrist, making their own impression of the cuff, this one holding him steadier than the glowing cuffs on both his wrists, refusing to allow Lance to shift back or away.

Keith shifts his weight, turning in the process, bringing his left knee to the ground, and his right knee up, and then he’s facing Lance. His eyes look to Lance’s flicking back and forth between them.

“Do you trust me?” He asks Lance.

And the thing is, Lance feels like he shouldn’t. He has no reason to trust Keith. Last time they tried to work together Keith sent him into an energy wall. it had hurt. He’s not going to forget it anytime soon. But he also remembers the last time Keith had asked (told) him to trust him, and Keith had got them through that. And the wall had been a little his fault too, if he’s honest.

Keith is still watching him, waiting for his response. Lance has never noticed Keith has purple eyes before. Who has purple eyes? He remembers his first grade project where everyone recorded their hair and eye colour. Brown hair and brown eyes had been the most popular, then blue, hazel and green. Nobody had purple eyes. Lance can’t remember ever seeing purple eyes since then either. Maybe purple eyes are a Keith only thing.

“Okay,” he swallows audibly, hopes that this isn’t where he loses a hand, although if it is, _at least it’s his left hand,_ “I trust you”

Keith flicks his gaze between Lance’s eyes once more, before giving a short sharp nod, and turning his attention back to the cuff. He shifts his grip back from Lance’s wrist to the hold the cuff steady once more. He hits a switch on the cutter, and a short inch sonic blade extends. Lance holds his breath watching as Keith holds the blade up to the cuff.

“Don’t move okay?” He tells Lance, redundantly, like Lance would risk moving when Keith is essentially holding a blade to his wrist.

Keith studies the cutter and the cuff, held almost together, then adjusts the blade with a dial on the side.

Then, quicker than Lance can react to, Keith stabs the cutter into the cuff.

Lance’s body still reacts, belatedly ripping his hand back, and when his hands come away he falls backwards roughly on his backside. He’s surprised by his sudden freedom, and has to take a moment to adjust.

“Ow.” He gripes once he’s got over his shock. He rubs at his left wrist, and inspects it for any marks or injury from Keith. Apart from some cuff chaff though, both his wrist and hand are fine.

“You could have taken my hand off!” He says, a little indignantly.

Keith stands up, looking down at Lance still on his backside in the dirt. Lance scrambles to stand up, not comfortable being looked down on. Only happier once he has his usual height advantage over Keith.

Keith crosses his arms and looks up at him. “You said you trusted me.” The words sound stern, but they also carry a teasing touch to them, like Keith knew this would be Lance’s reaction, and maybe it might be Lance’s over active imagination, be it almost sounds like Keith is laughing at him.

“Yeah okay.” He grumbles, still rubbing his wrist and hand.

He moves to hip check Keith in retaliation for the shock, but Keith sees it coming a mile away and steps aside at the last moment, leaving Lance to fall into the dirt once again.

This time Keith does laugh at him, but he also holds out a hand to help him up, and Lance takes the offered hand, lets himself be helped up even if he doesn’t need it really.

Once he’s standing he doesn’t let go of the grip, instead pulling Keith into his side, and taking advantage of the situation to give him a shove with his shoulder, despite the force Lance puts into it, the shove barely moves Keith, but Keith still huffs at him, and pulls his hand away from his. Lance misses the contact immediately. He didn’t realise how much he’d been missing physical contact if he misses _Keith’s_ hand. He tells himself that’s the only reason he would miss Keith’s hand.

“Come on cargo pilot, let’s get you back to your lion, we’ve got places to be.” Keith says, before walking off towards Red

Lance rushes after him, falling into line beside him.

“Sure sure delinquent.” He quips, and he can see the smile tugging at the edges of Keith’s face, an echo of the smile he can feel on his own face.

 

3.

Keith is just about to rush in and attempt to take the sentries, which was, quite frankly, just about the worst idea possible in Lance’s opinion.

Keith doesn’t hesitate, intent on proceeding with his no good, very bad plan, moving to charge the sentry guards. Lance grabs for his collar as Keith launched himself forward, just managing to get his fingers around the armour, and using his weight to counterbalance Keith, he pulls him back behind the rocky barrier.

“Keith.” He admonished, in hushed tones, trying to keep his voice low and undetectable to the sentries. “We can’t just run in there!”

Keith stares at him, before glancing at his hand where it’s reaching to his collar, and back to his face, brow furrowed as if confused, and, oh, Lance realises after a moment, he probably wants Lance to remove his hand.

His hand which was currently curled around Keith’s collar, Lance’s fingers resting against the warm neck behind the collar. Keith’s hair was brushing his fingers, and it was just as soft as he’d always thought it would be. Lance let his gaze shift from Keith’s face to where his hand was rested, his fingers brushing against Keith’s neck. Lance flexed his fingers experimentally, brushing more against Keith’s neck, strands (curls) of Keith’s hair running over his fingers.

Keith cleared his throat, ripped Lance’s gaze from Keith’s neck to Keith’s face, his eyebrows raised slightly, clearly questioning Lance’s actions. Lance flicked his gaze back to his fingers before ripping them away from Keith’s neck. Keith’s neck which was flushed red.

Huh. He’d never seen his neck like this before. And he’d spent a lot of time just behind Keith with his eyes glued to the back of that head.

He kind of wanted to see it more. _Not now brain,_ he told himself, and brought himself back to current problem of not letting Keith slash his way through the Galra forces.

But he filed the image and accompanying thought away in his brain to examine when they weren’t in the middle of a battle.

4.

Lance and Keith are panting, gasping for air to fill their lungs, attempting to replace the air which was sucked out of them into the vacuum of space. Lance’s legs feel weak, and unable to support himself any longer he lets himself slide down the castle wall, and his mildly pleased to feel Keith do the same beside him.He leans closer to Keith to rest his shoulder against him, in part collapsing from the exhaustion of the ordeal, but also to feel Keith next to him, to reassure himself that they are both okay, both real, both here now, on the safe side of the airlock once again. Shoulder resting against Keith now, he can feel the dampness from Keith’s shirt seeping into his own. His mind vaguely registers the feeling, and notifies him that he should move away to prevent further Keith sweat contamination, but he hushes it in favour of being glad to be alive, and concentrating on once again being able to breath air.

This has not been his day. First locked in the cryopods, now an airlock malfunction. He still wasn’t ruling out the castle being haunted.

Keith seems to be having it rough too, what with the fact he was being _attacked_ when he rescued Lance. Wait, why was he being attacked?

“What were you doing out there?” Sounds a lot like an accusation when Keith yells it at him, feels like he’s being blamed for being in the airlock, and it’s not like he’s that stupid to just go hang out in there and open the airlock. Even though he had run in there. Which in hindsight had not been the best action, but he’d been worried and rushed in. Keith can absolutely not judge him for that.

Easier to move on than bring any of that up though, so instead he yells, “ _Who was that guy?”_ Getting up in Keith's face as he does so.

When he does he can see that Keith’s face is sweaty too. He looks like maybe he just ran a marathon, or more likely had a marathon training session with the training room. His hair is damp on his forehead and those pesky intrusive thoughts tell him that Keith would be more comfortable with the hair off his face, and his fingers twitch to move it before he aborts the action, instead planting his hand on the ground between them.

“He was trying to kill me.” Keith shouts back, thankfully oblivious to the traitorous thoughts inside Lance’s head.

“Well is he the castle because that’s who’s trying to kill me!” He yells back, not thinking what his words mean until they’re out.

The castle is trying to kill them.

Quiznak.

They’re off and running almost immediately after, and once again he shelves his thoughts for later. Filed under _Lance’s questionable thoughts examine when not fighting for your life._

5.

When Shiro and Keith return from the Blade of Mamora headquarters they bring with them two galran fighters, concerned looks, and a truthbomb to match all truthbombs.

Keith tells them himself, and Lance doesn’t miss the way he won’t look at any of them when he does, instead staring resolutely at his feet, at the blade, or the castle wall.

As soon as they’ve finished their debrief Keith is out the door, Shiro calls after him to go to the medical bay, and Lance figures there’s like a fifty-fifty chance he actually will. But when Lance moves to peer around the door to catch a glimpse of Keith’s retreating figure, Lance downgrades it to something more along the lines of thirty-seventy. Keith’s definitely injured enough to need it, his shoulder looks brutal, and there’s a limp he’s trying to hide, but he’s walking determinedly, and Lance doubts that he’s determined to follow Shiro’s orders.

Lance wants to bring those odds up to one hundred.

“Do you need me right now?” Lance says, interrupting the flow of conversation that’s resumed between the two Galra fighters, Shiro and Allura.

Allura looks confused for a moment before waving her hand, “by all means, all the paladins are free to go.”

“Cool, cool, cool” Lance says, legs already moving him out the door as he’s saying it, he lengthens his stride and walks faster to try and catch up with Keith before he runs and hides.

When he turns the next corner he can see Keith at the end of the corridor, and he knows he’s got him now. He doesn’t bother calling out and trying to get Keith to wait for him, he’s sure Keith would just ignore him and possibly even try to walk faster to get away from him.

Instead Lance jogs to catch up, and when he does, he latches onto Keith’s arm and pulls Keith to face him.

Keith looks even more exhausted up close.

“What do you want Lance?” Keith asks, and his voice sounds just as tired as he looks, and it only solidifies Lance’s plan to hedge his bets.

“I thought I’d come help you get sorted in the medical bay”

Keith freezes, and Lance can see he’s trying to come up with some way to get out of it, so Lance doesn’t let him.

He uses his grip on Keith’s arm to pull him along and starts chattering so Keith can’t argue with him.

“Admittedly I’ve never taken on an army of Galran Freedom Fighters, but when I used to get hurt at home, like one time my little sister elbowed me in the face and it split open my eyebrow, there was so much blood like you wouldn’t believe. Although considering the fights you get into you probably would. But anyway, my Abuela took me inside and cleaned up my face, and put Arnica on it. Abuela swears by Arnica. Split eyebrow? Arnica. Insect bit? Arnica. Took a baseball to the face? You better bet she put Arnica on that.”

Keith doesn’t try to interrupt him when he’s talking, and he somewhat surprisingly lets Lance pull him along by his hold on his arm without any further objections. Lance would like to believe he goes willingly, but he figures that it’s more like he just doesn’t have the energy to fight it. And he knows by now that Lance fights dirty. He’s not above dragging Keith to the medical bay. Lance is an older brother. He’s used to doing whatever it takes to get his siblings to where they need to be.

He may not have Arnica, or his Abuela, but these things won’t stop Lance from doing his best to take care of Keith.

+1

At first there’s only shock.

Shiro has been missing for 5 days.

None of them are handling it well, but Lance is most worried about Keith.

The first day Keith was loud, full of questions. He asked Allura if a Paladin had ever disappeared (they hadn’t), discussed the pros of returning to where he’d last been (Allura was confident he wasn’t floating around space, and Black’s logs showed that Shiro hadn’t exited the Lion). He even talked to Slav about possible universe jumping (possible, but unlikely - the equipment required is significant and would have been noticed by the other paladins).

But as each possibility was ruled out, Lance had watched the anguish on Keith’s face increase.

But now Keith’s face wasn’t showing anything.

Keith had shut down. It’s been 5 days since Shiro disappeared, and for 4 of those days Keith had been absent, even if his body was still here. Keith was spending most of his days training, he wasn’t joining them for meals, and he wasn’t talking to any of them. He also knew that Keith wasn’t going back to his room at night. From the look on his face he wasn’t getting much sleep wherever he was spending his nights.

Tonight Lance was determined to find him.

He pulled on the dressing gown, and his slippers, making his way out of his room.

He checks Keith’s room first, just to be sure, but isn’t surprised to find it empty again tonight. He checks Shiro’s room, Keith hasn’t been there previous nights, but again, he wanted to be sure, but again, no dice. From there he checked the medical bay, the viewing room, the control room, and the kitchen. All of which were empty, and had no sign of Keith’s presence. Lance is relieved that the training room is empty when he checks there, Keith was already training far too often.

Next stop is the lion hangar.

Lance checks Red, but Keith isn’t with her. He can feel her worry pushing at his mind though, and can feel how _trapped_ it’s making her feel. Red likes to attack her problems head first, but she can’t attack this problem.

Keith and her have so much in common sometimes.

Lance is about to check the pool area next, or maybe go wake Pidge and have her hack the castle system to find Keith via his biosignal, when he notices there’s a soft glow coming from Black’s cockpit.

“Gotcha.” He tells the lions around him, who really don’t care about his personal mission.

Red gives him a mental push and it feels a lot like her saying please.

Okay, so one of the lions care.

He enters Black and makes his way to her cockpit, trying and failing not to think of the last time he was in here.

As he gets to the cockpit he can hear a voice, but it’s just a murmur, he can’t discern the words.

He can hear how footsteps echo, and they must give him away, because the talking stops before he gets close enough to make out the words.

When he enters the cockpit Keith is seated on the floor in front of the pilot chair. He’s obviously heard Lance since he stopped talking, but apart from that, he does nothing to acknowledge his presence.

Lance has a fleeting thought that he should sit in the chair. It would at least prompt a reaction from Keith, and the part of him that usually tells him to antagonise Keith, that _any reaction is better than no reaction_. Even if that reaction is just vitriol sent his way. But he tamps down on that part of himself. Sometimes it’s okay. Now is not one of those times.

Instead he walks up the the chair and sits down on the floor next to Keith. He leans his back against the chair and brings his knees up to his chest to mimic Keith’s positioning. He refrains from bumping his shoulder into Keith, as much as he wants to touch him, he doesn’t want to crowd Keith, knows Keith may not find the touch comforting like he would if he was grieving.

He’s debating what to say when to his surprise Keith is the one to break the silence.

“Shiro asked me to lead Voltron. If he ever... If anything ever happened to him.”

It’s not a surprise, not really, it’s like one of those obvious facts. As soon as you think about it, it’s clear that it would always be Keith. It doesn’t stop Lance from feeling a tiny flutter of bitterness, he shoves that feeling down though, and then locks the door behind it.

“Is that why you’re in here?” He asks instead.

“No.” Keith is looking straight forward, eyes staring blankly at the lion's control panel “I just... this is as close to him as I can get. I talk to Black and it’s almost like I’m talking to him.”

Lance’s heart gives a painful beat at that, and what do you say to that? What do you say to someone who’s lost someone they love, only maybe not lost, maybe they’ll get him back. What do you say to someone who it’s happening to for a second time.

So he says nothing.

He’s surprised a second time when Keith break the silence again.

“I never thought I’d get him back last time, but I did, and what if we don’t get him back now I just-” Keith breaks off as his voice cracks with the words.

“Sorry.” Lance tells him. And he is is, he’s so so sorry.

“it’s not your fault.” Keith responds quickly.

“It’s not anyone’s fault.” Lance tells him emphatically, because he can already hear the blame there. Can hear the guilt, in Keith's voice. He doesn’t know why Keith would feel like that, but guilt isn’t always logical. Lance knows where that thread goes, and he wants to shut it down right now.

Keith seems to accept his words, or at least doesn’t have the energy to argue, because he lets the silence between them grow. Lance knows it isn’t usually that easy to get Keith to give up on something, but he’ll tell him exactly the same thing every time until he really does accept it. Sometimes repetition is key.

“I miss him.” Keith whispers.

“I miss him too. And I promise you we will do everything in our power to find Shiro.”

And he means it. He wishes he could promise they’ll get him back but that’s not a promise he can make. There may come a time when they have to stop searching for Shiro. Lance hopes it never happens, and isn’t going to discuss that with Keith now, hopefully won’t ever have to. But he knows it still.

“But Keith, till then, you need to take care of yourself. And part of that is sleeping, and not working yourself to exhaustion. you need rest.”

Keith turns to look at him then, and ducks his head to rest on his knees.

“I know. But… when I sleep, everything is okay. I’m not thinking about Shiro. But then I wake up. And I don’t know he’s gone, and then I _remember_ and it’s like losing him all over again. And I remember I’m alone.”

Yeah, Lance’s heart is fluttering painfully at that.

“You’re not alone. You’ve got us. I know it’s not the same, but you’re not alone.”

Keith nods his head slowly, still rested on his knees. Lance just wants to help, tries to think of anything he can do.

“I could sleep with you.”

Keith’s eyebrows furrow and his face portrays his confusion clearly.

Lance slaps the palm of his hand to his head when he realises what that sounds like.

“Not sleep, sleep, like actually sleep.” The confused look doesn’t leave Keith’s face and Lance struggles to think of the right way to say what he means. “I mean sleep by you. So that when you wake up there’s someone there. And you know you’re not alone. I used to do it for my little brother Will. I’ll sit next to the bed.” Lance recognises he’s rambling now, but it seems to have done the trick, because Keith no longer looks confused. Or not as confused anyway.

“Okay.” He says when Lance takes a break to breath.

Success.

“Okay, cool, great.” Lance scrambles up, reaches out to pull Keith up, he’s doing this, they’re going to do this before Keith changes his mind. “Come on dude, time to go rest, we need our leader to have all his faculties about him.”

Keith winces at the leader comment, but takes his hand nonetheless. Lets Lance help him up, then steer him to his room. While Keith gets changed into his sleepwear, Lance arranges a spare pillow and blanket on the floor next to the bed. It’s not the comfiest place he’s slept, but it’s far from the worst.

Then Keith is in bed and Lance turns out the light and takes his spot next to Keith on the floor, resting his head against the mattress.

In the dark Lance can just make the outline of Keith’s features, the tufts of hair falling on his face and before he can second guess himself he brings his fingers up and shifts the curls off Keith’s face.

_I love him._

The realisation is sudden, and Lance finds that he’s not surprised by it. Not really.

Now isn’t the time to deal with his feelings though, and he knows Keith isn’t in a space to deal with them either. He wants to help Keith, and for now that’s taking care of him. If this is all he can have he’ll take it.

The last thing he remembers is watching Keith’s face, surprisingly relaxed in sleep, before he too succumbs to sleep.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments give me life.  
> Feedback is sincerely appreciated.  
> This is my first Voltron fic, so I hope you enjoy it :)  
> Updated 22/10/2017 with some edits - this had some glaring errors - I mean it's still probably got a bunch, but less!


End file.
